Green Chicken Curry Recipe Review

The recent blog on Thai curry types inspired me to look for a Thai curry recipe to make this weekend.

And I found a Green Chicken curry recipe that I haven’t tried yet. It does not say “Thai” in the recipe name but the ingredients give the game away (lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, shrimp paste and Thai basil leaves, etc.). This curry had “Thai” written all over it.

I got most of the ingredients that I needed when out doing my Saturday shopping. The shopping trip was a bit of a hide and seek mission. I had to try 4 different shops before I got most of the “tricky” ingredients (lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, shrimp paste and basil leaves). I know where all of my local “Indian” shops and supermarkets are but there are not many Thai shops around.

In the end, I had to do some substituting. I couldn’t find sweet Thai basil leaves but could find basil leaves (are they different?). I couldn’t get any “fresh” turmeric so ended up using 1/4 teaspoon of ground turmeric instead. And, for some reason, I couldn’t find any shallots anywhere so I substituted a small onion instead. I was amazed there weren’t any shallots around, even in “normal” greengrocers – maybe out of season?

Anyhow. I eventually got all of the ingredients or some alternative. Substituting ingredients is something that you might need to do with any recipe that has unusual ingredients. In the past, I’ve just missed out putting an ingredient into a dish if I couldn’t find a suitable alternative. I can’t see much harm in the occasional ingredient swap.

The green curry recipe has a lot of steps, or seems to have a lot of steps. But, really, there is not a great deal of work to do since most of the steps are to guide you into dry-roasting some spices to turn into a powder and then making a paste from lots of the ingredients.

It took me about 30 minutes to make the powder and paste and to prepare the chicken, onion and broccoli.

But the rest of the cooking was going to be easy as it would only take about 20 minutes to actually cook the curry.

I waited until the curry tasting crew were scheduled to arrive before starting the cooking (including soaking the basmati).

And the cooking was a piece of cake. Heat up the oil, fry the paste and onion, throw in the chicken, start cooking the basmati and, finally, adding the lime juice, coconut cream and broccoli.

It would be hard to imagine anything going wrong. I suppose I could have knocked the frying pan onto the floor – but I didn’t.

The tasting crew made a grand entrance 2 minutes before the meal was ready so I served up the Green Chicken Curry on basmati rice while the crew were opening some beers and sitting around the table.

And the curry was great. There was a strong taste of the shrimp paste and you could clearly taste the lime. The chicken and broccoli were well cooked and had a lovely, creamy, coconut flavoured sauce. The only criticism I had was that the sauce was runny but the taste more than made up for that.

The green chicken curry was a hit and received a taste score of 8 out of 10. The spice/heat level was medium and there was a delightful aftertaste once the curry was eaten.

This was another great Thai curry. Why not make it and see for yourself?